Chicago area runner/cyclist explores the streets and trails around him on his own terms, then writes about it.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Still Alive – Allstate 13.1 Half Marathon Race Recap

This was a triumph. Making a note here: ‘huge success’.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.*

Before the Race

This was probably my favorite race experience yet,
and I have had quite a few amazing races in the past year! Full disclosure, I ran
this race with my friend Eric and we are both Allstate employees. This being
said, I got to take full advantage of the VIP perks of this at the race for the
first time. VIP tent with private ‘bathrooms’, VIP gear check, Pre/Post race
food (bagels with peanut butter and jelly! bananas, fruit, sandwiches,
eventually boxes of luminati’s pizza (I’m not always the purest ‘vegan’ in the
world, perhaps I’ll bore you with my thoughts on this in a later post), water, Gatorade,
etc). A ‘personal’ (meaning for the smallish group of people in the VIP area) masseuse.
They even gave us free flip-flops to change into after the race (I grabbed some
for the beach but my Vibram’s and I have made it through a lot together and so
we did not part until I got home that afternoon, showered, and slept.

I wanted to make sure I got to bed on time so I could
wake up and meet outside Eric’s place at 5:15 the next morning so we could head
to his car and travel down to the high school parking lot where we had reserved
parking and a shuttle to the start line (yup, so spoiled I don’t think I’ll be
able to run a regular race again) ;-P In order to ensure I would do this, and
because I wasn’t going to go out and drink or anything the night before a race
anyway, I decided not to go out that night. Instead I stayed in and made the mistake
of logging on to Steam for the first time in a few months to kill some time
before I could catch an 8:30-9PM bed time to be awake again at 4:30 AM. I could
have played anything and been done at a reasonable time, instead I once again
entered the world of Skyrim. This Dovahkiin did not manage to go to bed
until almost midnight (alright, it was more like 11:30 but still…) on the night
before my first half. All these weeks training and I was going to be burned out
not because I had slacked off in training but instead because I was too anxious
to sleep and filled these restless hours within the realm of Skyrim.

I used to be a runner like you, until I waited in a
starting corral for half an hour and really needed to pee. Before Eric and I met
up with some of the other Chicago Running Bloggers we hung out for a bit to
enjoy the sights of the remnants of the sunrise over the beach, snapped a few
pictures that we could be envious of during races to come, and I guzzled some
water and a bottle of Gatorade (figured I could use some sugar to start the
morning if I wasn’t going to have coffee just yet). We said hello to everyone from
the Chicago Running Bloggers and before we knew it, it was time to find our
places in our individual corrals. I managed to run off to use our ‘private
bathrooms’ quickly as I figured I would be in the corrals a while before my
wave was released (I was back in Corral M standing next to the 2:30 pacer, who
as it turns out, was an older gentleman who had just run a 100 mile race the Saturday
before! (This apparently takes about 28 hours including a little rest).

“I used to run back in the 70’s, but then I took 25
years off to wait for them to come up with arthritis drugs, and I have been
running again ever since.” Rather inspiring story to hear before the race! He
apparently has collected so many medals in his years of running that he keeps a
select few now and donates the rest to ‘Medals For Mettle’, a

“non-profit
organization that facilitates the gifting of marathon, half marathon, and
triathlon finishers’ medals. Runners from around the world give their hard
earned medals to Medals4Mettle. Our worldwide network of physicians and
volunteers then awards these medals attached to a Medals4Mettle ribbon to
children and adults fighting debilitating illnesses who might not be able to
run a race, but are in a race of their own just to continue to live their life.”

Hearing some of what this man has done (so far!) makes
me want to run just a little bit farther and a little more often, simply
because I am lucky enough to be able to do so. Really glad I got to start in
the Corral where I did, just to hear a couple of this guy’s stories. Also, it
again took my mind off needing to pee ever since they released corral D. Two
minutes between waves… I can make it.

Time flies faster than it ever has while waiting in
a corral. I’m not sure if it was the stories, the excitement of my first half,
a well-organized race, or some combination thereof, but before I knew it I was
at the front of the starting line for wave ‘M’ and the announcer was counting
down from ten. I wanted to start off faster than I should, just like I always
seem to. Focus. I slowed my pace knowing that I would be excited from the race
and also that it was a hotter day (still nice out though but direct sunlight
for the duration has a surprising effect that I couldn’t know until I experienced
it). Still, I had heard about it from my friends who had run Half’s before and
so that helped immensely as I paced myself out of the gate and began my run.

As I ran, I figured that as my body used water I would
eventually need a bathroom less and less. As I passed the first water station I
saw bathrooms lined up, but a voice in my head echoed the advice of a Fremen to an Atreides that ‘the best place to conserve water is in your body’.
Generally this is true in my experience and so I kept going past the ‘bathrooms’
and along down the trail. Unfortunately I found that there are limits to this
wisdom. Apparently after you have reached a certain point, Nature becomes a
telemarketer at dinnertime and refuses to give up calling. After making it to a
little past mile three, I stopped at the ‘bathrooms’ near the water station
quickly, grabbed some more water to make up for what I had just expelled, and
was on my way.

Relief. Comfort. I ran a frustrating 5K and was now
feeling wonderful again! The wind felt good on my face. I kept pace with a girl
who was in the starting corral with me for quite some time, but lost her for a
bit after my brief pit stop at the water station near mile three. I caught
sight of her again about a half mile later and closed the distance before
resuming a /follow pace. This is how I typically pace, both during races where I
am trying to maintain a constant pace or during training when trying to push
myself to a slightly higher level than I think I can reach by pacing with someone
who runs near my level but has just a few more XP. I checked the time at mile
markers to make sure the pace she had set was not too fast or too slow from my
usual training pace and found that it was perfect! Not too fast where I would
lose her immediately, but still fast enough to push myself just a few levels
faster than I would have run (for that distance) in training. I felt great
doing this for another three miles or so before I started feeling the heat. My
pacing girl took off out of sight once more and I took it down a notch for a
distance. On the advice of Eric, since I had no chew/gels/etc. I would need
something besides water to keep the calories/energy etc. up and so I alternated
Water and Gatorade at every other water station. I didn’t stop at every water
station (though I probably should have, but I wanted to make up for my brief
pit stop and you never really seem to feel dehydration until it’s nearly too
late it seems). At this point, I made a note to stop more regularly.

Mile seven water station was manned by a bunch of French
students/citizens/people-who-know-French, and each time I passed them the only
English they seemed to speak were the words: ‘Water’, ‘Gatorade’, and ‘Hello
beautiful ladies, welcome to the French aid Station!’ I also happened to be
running in my Bastille Day race shirt during the Half which they loved.This also happens to be another one of my
next races coming up!

I made the turn at mile seven! I am halfway there
and I don’t even really feel drained yet! Sure, the sun was out, but it wasn’t
85 degrees like it was last year. I was feeling pretty decent. I decided to run
in the new, correctly sized, Vibrams that I was debating running in after acquiring
them only two weeks before the race. After running ten miles in them the week
before (10K of which being a race which I did fairly well on) I figured it
would be worth it to run the Half in my new kicks. Good call. My feet, legs,
etc. felt as lovely during the entire experience (thank you good training and
comfy shoes!). Even after the race, I love the feeling of those little foot-hugging
shoes on my feet that I didn’t even feel the need to peel them off and slap on
my free flip-flops. They really make the terrain feel more real when you run. I
love interacting with and paying attention to the surface over which I am
navigating.

As I circled back from the mile seven turn around,
around mile eight I passed my original 2:30 pacer friend and the group pacing
with him. Around mile nine I found my original pacer girl as she had slowed to
a walk. I continued on. About halfway through mile 11 I found a girl in yellow
shorts that was running much faster than I should but about as fast as I wanted.
My mind figured that I had less than a 5K left and that it was alright to run
at 5K race pace (yeah…). My body was not asked for its thoughts on the matter
and my legs moved to follow the girl in the yellow shorts. She was clearly
going to out run me, but I wanted to know how long I could keep up while still
having enough energy to sprint to the finish. About halfway through mile 12 I realized
that I could either keep up with her, or save enough gas to push it across the
finish. I decided to pull back a bit so as not to quite fall back to a
reasonable speed, but still fast enough so as she pulled farther ahead it would
be at slow and hardly noticeable intervals. I kept sight of her until she made
the turn into the South Shore Cultural Center. In the meantime, I found myself
pacing with to women a couple years younger than myself perhaps, one was trying
to steadily push to the finish, similar to what I would have been doing had I tried
to keep pace with Yellow Shorts for much longer, and the other looked like she
was chomping at the bit to take off and finish strong. I tried to pace with the
second of the two. She had pulled a bit in front of her friend as she called
back inspiring words to her, hoping to cheer some extra energy into her friends
legs that would help them both skip across the finish. After we made the turn
into the Cultural Center ourselves, her friend found the extra boost she needed
from her personal Cheer Leading Runner friend (good blogger name?) and the
crowd and I kept pace with them until the turn just before the final turn. Here
I kicked on whatever Nitrous I had left and dashed crossed the finish line, all
smiles and feeling very accomplished. After that running high, I am going to
need to seek out a Method-One acting clinic.

After the Race

Breakdown:

Packet pickup – Just as orderly and well located as always. I opted for the
packet pickup on Friday at Fleet Feet in Oldtown. Friendly staff was around to
help me pick up my half marathon shirt and bib with ease. I was also there
picking up a 5K packet for a friend who was feeling a bit too under the
weather to run the next day. While the half marathon pickup was very easy and
well organized, the 5K had only one line for all participant pickups and the
person charged with keeping track of the bibs seemed to have misplaced Jennifer’s
bib. He checked about five times, in the two piles of 5K bibs in front of him
before determining that the number was simply not there. I was in the process
of texting Jennifer to see if someone had managed to swing by and pick up her
packet for her before I made it back from the office when, after several more
times through each pile, he managed to find her bib. At least he was persistent
and managed to come through in the end. Again, half marathon shirt, impressive
tech shirt that it probably one of my favorite race shirts yet to make it into
my collection; however, when it came time for to grab Jennifer’s 5K race shirt,
they had run out of her size. Shirts, with sizes, were ordered in advance, so
they most likely gave away too many of her size far too early thinking that
they would likely have extras and misjudged this a bit. They ended up assuring
me that a larger children’s size was the exact same size as the woman’s size
she ordered only under a different branding. Given that the size above what she
ordered in women’s looked like a bit of a jump in size, I decided to believe in
the theory that this was ‘the exact same size’. Hopefully they were right…

Gearcheck/Waves and Corrals. –Gear check was
available and there was added security as it was a larger race. They had clear
plastic bags that you emptied the contents of you gear into so they could see what
was inside before storing it away. I checked my gear at the general gear check
before realizing that I had VIP gear check, so I ended up going back and
un-checking my gear and re-checking it in the VIP area so I would have less to
deal with after the race. Figured it would be a good call with the extra
security taking more time to check gear. It seemed well organized and well-staffed
though and I didn’t hear any real complaints about gear check. Checking and
un-checking my gear was quick and painless. They even found my bag almost right
away because of how they stored them by numbers and not just in a random pile
from bibs 1000-2000 etc.

Course layout – Loved it. Sunny, yes. Along the lakefront, indeed. Great
view, decent breeze, wonderful day. Seemed like a pretty fast course even
though it was a little narrow at times but nothing too terrible. I am also
pretty sure they keep it the same year after year as the map they handed up was
last updated in 2010 (it says so right on it).

Finish line – Finish line is great because it ends right inside the South
Shore Cultural Center (apparently where President Obama got married) and there
are people standing all around to watch you finish as you end the last quarter
of a mile or so weaving through the cultural center grounds to the finish line.
They hand you the typical banana, water, munchies as you finish, but I only
grabbed the medal and headed back to the VIP area where we had our own munchies.
I ate far to much pizza. We even had our own small pony keg of beer tapped over
near the sandwiches. Perfect place to sit and relax as you watched others
finish their personal journeys across the finish line while sipping (read:
guzzling) several bottles of water and inhaling food before enjoying a beer as
you kick back in a chair and chat with other around you about what they experienced
during the last 13.1 miles and several hours of our lives.

Official time for my first half (and so Current PR): 2:08:11

I do what I
must, because I can.*

*Gleefully
‘covering’ lines from the wonderful Jonathan Coulton. May he forgive me.

4 comments:

Great job with the PR! you should have found your magical yellow shirt girl and thanked her after the race!I imagined the VIP tent having a sign with Bender from Futurama Meme saying - i'm going to make my own snack stationed with bananas and beer!

Holy Moly - I hadn't realized that picking up my Packet was such a hassle. You mentioned they had issues but it never occurred to me there were THAT many issues. Thanks Again for getting my packet for me!

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